The Sixth Window

by Rachel Abbott

  *

  She reached the door to the south wing and pressed the numbers on the keypad, suddenly realising that the entrance code might be different. It wasn’t, and she took that as an omen that she was doing the right thing.

  There was nobody about in the main hallway, and Scarlett climbed the stairs to the second floor. Immediately she could see that this part of the building was more luxurious than theirs. The corridor along the courtyard side was the same width but with fewer doors, probably leading to bigger apartments. There were colourful paintings on the walls too, and a heavy-duty carpet on the floor that looked infinitely smarter than their bare concrete.

  She made her way along the passage to where it turned to the right, a mirror image of their side, except for the uplighters bathing the exposed brick walls in a warm yellow light. She headed towards the last apartment on the left, passing the fire exit. She was surprised to see that in this stretch of corridor there was only one apartment on each side, as opposed to three in their wing.

  ‘They must be huge,’ she muttered to herself as she headed towards the final door.

  She pressed the bell lightly, as if afraid someone would fling the door open and yell, ‘Who are you?’ in her face.

  Nothing happened, and she wasn’t entirely surprised. Even the noise made by switching on a kettle would have been enough to cover the sound of her feeble ring. She waited for a suitable period and pressed again, holding the button a little longer. There was no response. Maybe she was too late and the girl had gone out.

  Shrugging her shoulders and deciding that she would come back another day, Scarlett had just turned to leave when she heard footsteps coming along the corridor and the sound of heavy breathing, as if someone had been running. She couldn’t see who it was but doubted it was the girl she thought she’d heard.

  A short overweight man, the waistband of his trousers sitting below his belly and his shirt gaping under the bottom button, marched around the corner, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a grubby hanky. He was clearly not used to exertion.

  She recognised him as the man who had replaced Cliff the caretaker, the man who hadn’t wanted to give her the code to get in.

  ‘What you doing?’ he shouted.

  ‘I came to introduce myself to our neighbours.’ Scarlett backed up against the wall, uncomfortable with the man’s aggression.

  ‘How did you get in?’ he asked, suspicion causing wrinkles between his eyes.

  ‘I live in the north wing. My name’s Scarlett. I met you on Tuesday. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘I can’t be expected to remember every Tom, Dick and bleedin’ Harry that comes through this place, and right now I want to know what you’re doing here. I got a call from one of the neighbours – clocked you through the spyhole in his door and said you were spooking round. So what you up to?’

  Scarlett was starting to panic. He walked towards her, his chin thrust out and his hands on his wide hips. She could smell his stale sweat, thinly disguised by cheap aftershave. Surely he wouldn’t hurt her? Not here, where anyone might walk around the corner? But who would come to her rescue? There were only two apartments, and nobody had answered the door she had tried.

  ‘I told you. I wanted to meet the neighbours. I can hear them through the wall – our apartment’s on the other side.’ She could hear the tremor in her voice.

  The man laughed nastily and looked her up and down as if she was stupid. Scarlett wished she wasn’t wearing shorts as his eyes lingered on her legs.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, girl. That apartment’s empty and has been since the day it was finished. There’s nobody living there. So get yourself back to your own place and stop rooting around in this part of the building where you’ve no right to be.’

  ‘But I heard a girl laughing. There must be someone there.’

  ‘You must have been dreaming, or you’ve been hearing stories about that mad woman what lived in your place before you. I heard all about her. Barking, she was. There was nobody there then, and there’s no bugger there now either.’

  Scarlett edged along the wall, trying to get past him. She wasn’t going to argue, but whatever this horrible sweaty man thought, she was sure there had been someone in the apartment, because the only other explanation was one she didn’t want to believe.

  30

  Natalie bent down quickly to grab her bag from where she had dumped it and whipped out her phone. She didn’t look to see who was calling. She just cancelled it.

  Was there a chance that Ed hadn’t heard? She couldn’t hear him moving any more. She didn’t know where he was. Then she remembered that Ed could move with the stealth of a cat when he chose to.

  She edged away from the door as quietly as she could. She didn’t want to be on the other side of this door if he chose to fling it open with his full weight behind it. Still she heard nothing. Had he gone?

  She stood watching the door, waiting to see the doorknob turn. Nothing happened for what felt like minutes, and then she heard his voice.

  ‘Why don’t you come out, Natalie?’ he said quietly.

  Oh God, he knows it’s me. How could he?

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Just come out and tell me why you’re here.’

  Natalie looked around her for somewhere to put the camera so he wouldn’t know she had been looking, but she ran out of time. The door was pushed slowly open and Ed stood in the entrance, a look on his face that she couldn’t interpret. He was staring into her eyes, but then his gaze fell to the camera in her hands and his eyebrows came together in a frown.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ed,’ she said finally. ‘I thought I’d pick up a few more things while you were out.’

  He didn’t speak for a moment, as if weighing up his words.

  ‘And one of those things was the camera?’

  ‘No, I…’ She had no idea what to say.

  He waited, in that quiet way of his, giving her time to think up a lie.

  ‘I came in here to see if there was a bag I could use to put some stuff in, and I just saw the camera.’

  The corners of Ed’s mouth turned up slightly. ‘You just saw the camera on the top of the wardrobe,’ he said, nodding as if that was a perfectly sensible explanation.

  Natalie wanted to leave. The emotions hitting her from every angle were making her breathless.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I’ll just go.’

  She put the camera down on the chest of drawers and bent to pick up her bag.

  ‘No, I don’t think you should go just yet. You’ve left the camera switched on, by the way. Were you hoping to take some photos?’

  He knew that wasn’t why she had been looking. He knew she wanted to see what pictures he had been taking, whether they were like the pictures on the website. Or worse, if he had pictures of Scarlett.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘Can we just forget it? I’ll go.’

  ‘Oh no, I don’t think so. I think you’d better finish what you started. Go on. Next to the screen is a button with an arrow. Press that and you can have a look.’

  Natalie just stared at him. She was no longer sure she wanted to know. She could sense a quiet rage burning in Ed, something she had never seen but which Bernie had told her was awesome when it erupted. She felt sure he wasn’t going to let her out of the room until she had looked at the pictures.

  Without taking her eyes off him she picked up the camera. Suddenly the heavy silence in the room was shattered once more by the bright, cheerful ringtone of her phone. Relief flooded her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I think I need to take this.’

  She pressed to accept the call. And then wished she hadn’t.

  31

  Scarlett had finally escaped from Martin and walked hurriedly away along the corridor, with a final, ‘Keep to your own side of the bleedin’ building’ ringing in her ears. She could feel his eyes boring into her back, and she reached round to tug down the hem of her shorts. She was sure he wasn’t supposed to speak t
o tenants like that, but no doubt because she was a teenage girl he thought he could get away with it.

  She didn’t know whether to tell her mum, but if she did she would have to tell her about the voices too and it would just give her something else to worry about. Scarlett still hadn’t decided whether to say anything to her about Ed’s package either. It might mean she would never make up with him.

  As it was, when her mum came through the door an hour or so earlier than normal all thoughts of telling her anything were driven from Scarlett’s mind. Her face was white.

  ‘Mum, what’s up?’

  She didn’t answer Scarlett immediately, and her eyes looked slightly red-rimmed as she walked over to the breakfast bar and dropped her keys.

  ‘Mum?’ she repeated, worried now. She started to get up from the sofa.

  ‘I’m fine. But I need to talk to you. Sit down, love.’

  Something had happened. Scarlett could feel it, and all thoughts of Martin and the laughter through the wall were driven from her mind.

  She lowered herself back onto the sofa as her mum walked slowly towards her across the room. Sitting down next to her, she reached for Scarlett’s hand.

  ‘I don’t want you to get upset, Scarlett, but I had a call from the police this afternoon. It was a detective sergeant from the team that deals with serious crimes.’

  Scarlett gasped. ‘What’s happened? Is this about Cliff?’

  She realised from her mum’s puzzled expression that for the moment she had completely forgotten about the mugging. Did that mean it was someone closer?

  ‘It’s about Dad, love. Do you remember after he died that the police had a lot of questions?’

  Scarlett nodded, but she also remembered that she had been far too upset to talk to them properly, far too traumatised by her last conversation with him and her overpowering sense of guilt.

  ‘The enquiry was never closed because they didn’t find the people who…knocked him over. But now it seems they’ve caught the man they believe may have been driving. They’re checking back through everything, because if this man was the driver they need to make sure their case against him sticks, and if it’s not him it might mean they’ve been looking in the wrong place all this time and they’re going to have to look at all the evidence again.’

  ‘Why now, Mum? Why have they only just caught this man?’

  ‘I don’t know, love. It’s good that they’ve got a suspect at last, but I don’t want you to have to go through all the questions again, particularly if turns out they’re back to square one. It’s not going to bring your dad back, but going over everything again is going to upset you, and you’re my priority now.’

  Scarlett felt as if her chest was filled with butterflies, flapping frantically. When she had spoken to the police last time she hadn’t said a word about the text she had seen on her dad’s phone with the incriminating words ‘I love you’ or her suspicion that he had been having an affair. Her mum’s heart had already been broken by his death – how much worse would it have been for her if Scarlett had revealed what she had discovered?

  But she wasn’t a thirteen-year-old child now, and perhaps this time she should tell them what she knew. Everything she knew.

  *

  Natalie looked at her daughter’s horror-struck face. She knew Scarlett would be upset by having to talk to the police, but this seemed excessive. She looked terrified. Her own fear from that afternoon hadn’t yet abated, but she couldn’t think about that right now. She had to focus on her daughter.

  ‘I know it’s going to be upsetting, Scarlett, and if you don’t feel you can do it, you have to tell me. But I keep thinking that if they can’t get enough evidence against this man, he could go on and kill someone else’s husband or dad.’

  Scarlett still hadn’t spoken, and Natalie reached for her hand.

  ‘I’ll tell the police that you can’t possibly know anything that would be helpful. Maybe they won’t need to talk to you again. But I have to talk to them – you do see that, don’t you?’

  Natalie had blocked out so much about that time. They were bound to ask her if Bernie had been worried about anything, and it was so difficult to remember which cases he was fretting about just before he died and which had happened months earlier. She did remember that occasionally, when Bernie hadn’t known she was watching him, she had seen an almost sad expression cross his face. She would ask him if he was okay, and the smile always shot back into position. ‘Just a tricky case,’ he would say, but he never told her any details.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say to them,’ Natalie said. ‘I hardly saw him with all the overtime and the gym. Anyway, Alison’s coming round to help me remember. I talked to her endlessly at the time, and she might remember stuff that I don’t. She’s coming here, and I know she wants to see you.’

  Scarlett yanked her hand out of her mother’s grip. Her lips tightened but she didn’t say a word.

  ‘Scarlett, I’m sorry, but I need her for this. You can be with us, if you want to be, or take your iPad and go in the bedroom if you prefer. But Alison understands me, and there’s nothing she doesn’t know.’

  ‘Except who killed Dad.’

  Natalie took a breath. ‘Well, of course she doesn’t know that. Look, she was in town today anyway, so it seemed like a good idea.’

  ‘What time’s she coming?’

  ‘She’ll be here any minute. I thought we could order Chinese. Is that okay?’

  Scarlett’s face was like thunder. ‘Fine. I’ll chuck the chicken I marinated in the bin, shall I?’

  Natalie reached for Scarlett’s hand again. ‘I’m sorry, love. I didn’t know you’d prepared anything. It’s really thoughtful of you. But leave it where it is. It’ll taste even better tomorrow night.’

  Before either of them could say another word, the intercom buzzed from the main entrance.

  ‘That’ll be Alison. Please, Scarlett. I know you resent her, but there are no secrets. You can stay with us all the time. I really need her right now.’

  ‘Do you, Mum?’ Scarlett sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so horrible. You talk to Alison, and I’ll join you for the food when it arrives.’

  With a sigh of relief, Natalie spoke into the intercom. ‘Come up, Alison. Second floor, last door on your right.’ She turned back to Scarlett, who was standing in the door to the bedroom, her brow furrowed.

  ‘Perhaps I should apologise to Alison too,’ Scarlett said. ‘I know I’ve not been very friendly recently. Is it okay if I have a word with her before she goes?’

  ‘Of course you can. You can talk to her over dinner.’

  ‘That’s the thing, Mum. I’d rather do it in private. Do you mind?’

  Natalie shook her head, trying to hide her surprise. ‘Whatever you need to do, love, it’s fine.’

  She smiled at Scarlett as she disappeared into the bedroom, but her smile faded the minute the door was closed. Why did she want to apologise to Alison in private? What could she possibly have to say that she couldn’t say in front of her mum?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by visions of Ed that afternoon. After her call from the police she had made her excuses and left without telling him who had called and why. He hadn’t tried to stop her and had stood to one side to let her past. She couldn’t look at him and didn’t know whether she was glad or not that she hadn’t seen the photos on his camera. She had left her front-door key on the hall table as she went out.

  But she had no time to think about Ed now. She had to focus on Bernie.

  There was a knock on the door. Alison had arrived.

  32

  The investigation into the death of Jennifer Bale seemed to be stalling. Little Archie’s recollection of the conversation with his sister could be wrong, but there was something horribly sinister about Jennifer saying she was ‘as good as dead’, and Tom was praying for a breakthrough. They needed to find the boy or man she had been seeing in the hope that he would provide the key, but nobo
dy seemed to have any idea who he was.

  The only good news was that they had finally made contact with Lauren, the friend with whom Jennifer was supposed to have gone swimming each week, and Tom and Becky had spoken to her earlier in the day. She hadn’t given them as much information as they had hoped, though.

  ‘I went to the pool to swim – to exercise,’ Lauren said, a slight note of exasperation breaking through her tears. ‘Jennifer seemed to think the purpose of going swimming was to have fun. It was her way of getting out of the house and out from under what she called her mother’s constant scrutiny. So when we were there, she mucked about all the time. It was really annoying. But perhaps I should have been nicer to her. I should have told someone when she stopped coming. I knew she was lying to her parents about it.’

  This resulted in a fresh bout of tears, so they’d had to take it slowly. Tom could see Lauren felt guilty, as if she had aided and abetted Jennifer’s lies and therefore was in some way culpable.

  ‘You’ve nothing to blame yourself for, Lauren. Friends ask each other to keep secrets all the time.’ He gave her a few moments before continuing with the questions. ‘Did you see her talking to a boy at all?’

  Lauren sniffed, partly as a result of the tears, and partly in disgust as she told them about Jennifer’s behaviour.

  ‘There was a group of stupid boys messing about ducking each other until the lifeguard told them off. Jennifer was sitting on the side, kicking her legs and splashing them, laughing at them as if she was trying to draw their attention.’

  ‘Was there one in particular?’

  ‘Not that I noticed. It really bugged me that she was being so stupid. I tried to ignore them. Anyway, the last week we were there together the lifeguard threw all the boys out and he took Jennifer on one side and gave her a good talking-to. She went off in a huff to get changed before I’d finished my swim. She didn’t even come home with me that night. We split up at the tram stop. Jennifer said she was meeting someone and had a silly smile on her face.’ Lauren looked up, her face full of the knowledge of who Jennifer had been meeting. ‘It was him, wasn’t it?’